Caspian laced his fingers through mine, the jolt of contact racing up my arm and lodging behind my ribs like a spark plug firing.
“I’m here, Max,” he whispered. “Breathe easy. We’re all here. You’re safe.”
Calm down, girl,my demon passenger commanded, sharp as a slap. It hadn’t spoken during the vision, or offered any comfort while the Oracle’s black eyes swallowed my sister’s face. It’d been observing quietly, calculating like a predator.This weakness cannot happen again. You can’t let fear freeze you if you want to survive. If you want to get Missy out, get your shit together.
The entity in me had no patience for a girl choking on her fear. It’d watched civilizations crumble without blinking an eye.
I stopped fighting the terror. I’d been clenching against it, locking my muscles, trying to hold the fear at arm’s length the way I’d held every emotion at arm’s length since my parents died.
You couldn’t outmuscle a panic attack. So I let it pass through me. Let it burn itself out.
The air came easily now, and Aelindor’s lips left mine. He pressed his forehead to my temple, one hand moving to the backof my neck to anchor and comfort me. Caspian’s thumb traced slow circles on my knuckles.
My tears dried. My heartbeat slowed. My lungs opened completely as two of the most powerful men on the continent anchored me.
And my inner demon was right. I couldn’t lose my shit like this ever again.Not with Missy in the Collector’s hands and no one but me to get her out.
“That’s my girl,” Caspian said softly and squeezed my hand.
I squeezed back, and my gaze found Drakken.
He stood at the far side of the tent, his arms crossed over his bare chest, his shoulder braced against the pole, as he watched me with intensity that bordered on aggression. But his jaw wasn’t locked the way it usually was when he looked at me. And there was something else I couldn’t name and hadn’t seen before in his gray eyes.
For a moment, the world narrowed to the four of us in a tent, in the middle of the night, three blocks from the DarkVeil. Aelindor’s arms wrapped around me, Caspian’s fingers laced with mine, and Drakken’s watchful presence filling the silence across the tent. The three most powerful alpha males arranged around me like the points of a compass.
A primal, aching need seared in my chest.
Aelindor’s touch could still the chaos inside me and quiet every screaming nerve, Caspian’s always sent a spark to my core and made me feel fierce and alive, and even though he wasn’t here, I could still feel Nikolai’s mouth between my thighs if I let myself remember. His crimson eyes had looked at me like I was the answer to a hunger that had nothing to do with the blood he needed for survival.
Even Drakken, with his rage and resistance, lit something in me.
Every romance I’d ever heard of followed the same shape: one woman, one man. You chose, and you committed. That was the deal. Wanting more than one person wasn’t loyalty; it was betrayal. My logic accepted the conventional ideal of faithfulness, but my body didn’t give a fuck.
And the guilt felt like a cold, waterlogged coat.
Even though I was a piece of shit, I warned myself to be very careful not to reach the point of causing them to fight over me. The heirs weren’t like ordinary men. They were powerful, territorial alphas, raised on war and dominance and able to topple kingdoms.
I’d seen Caspian and Nikolai bicker over who got to hold the cup for me when I was half-dead in the infirmary. I’d watched Caspian stake his claim on me in public at the Broken Drum while Drakken glared from across the balcony like a rival king. Every interaction I’d witnessed between Caspian, Nikolai, and Drakken, when it involved me, had been a contest. A tug-of-war with me in the middle, being pulled until my bones ached.
But it was different with Aelindor.
When the Fae prince held me, Caspian didn’t challenge him, and Drakken left us be. No jealous snipes, no attempts to pull me away, no brutalizing each other.
When Aelindor was in the room, even though the competition didn’t vanish, it shifted into discipline.
I wanted to indulge in their warmth and comfort just a little longer. I didn’t have the energy or will to untangle myself from them. Not tonight, anyway. Not with the Oracle’s words chilling my blood and my sister’s scream still ringing in my skull.
Chapter 3
Max
Islid off Aelindor’s lap.
My body protested. Every muscle wanted to stay curled against him, wrapped in his warmth and the clean male scent of him, but I couldn’t have this conversation from a prince’s lap. Not if I wanted them to hear a soldier instead of a girl who’d just screamed herself awake.
I sat on the edge of the bedroll, pulled my knees to my chest, and hooked my arms around them. The lock of white hair that marked me as a freak in some cadets’ eyes had come loose in the mess. Caspian tucked it behind my ear with tender fingers.
“I’m sorry, sirs,” I said, partly in gratitude, partly ashamed for dragging them into my wreckage. “I was out of my wits. It won’t happen again.”
